**NB. This story is as it comes – straight out of my head and may contain typos**
Tessa
The lady who’d picked up Beans was only too happy to hand him over, especially when I showed her a picture of him on my phone with Geoff, complete with the distinctive white spot on his nose. Plus he greeted me with a wagging tail and immediately began sniffing my pockets.
“He knows I’m a soft touch at work.”
“My cat’s been sitting on top of the kitchen cupboard, hissing, ever since I got home,” the lady said as she tried to hang on to Beans’s collar.
Heath helped out—he’d come inside with me while Mick stayed with the car. I’d learned he was new to Blackwood, still going through his induction rotation where starters spent a week in each department to learn how the company worked. Zander said they got well-rounded individuals that way, rather than employees who knew their own job but nothing else.
“He’s very friendly, but I’m not sure if he’s spent much time around cats.”
“I think he just wants to play, but Kitkat’s such a diva. I was going to walk down to the shop and get some dog food, but I wasn’t sure whether to leave them alone together.”
“It’s no problem for us to take him. We’re hoping he might be able to sniff out his owner.”
“His owner’s lost as well?”
“Maybe? He’s not answering the phone. We’re going to try backtracking from the spot where you found Beans to his house. That was near the church?”
“Right outside the front gate.”
“Did he try to take you in any particular direction?”
“Maybe towards the park? I thought he just wanted a walk, and when I didn’t see an owner… It’s creepy there in the dark.” She shuddered and leaned in closer. “Who’s the hottie?”
“He works for a security company, and they’re helping out.”
“Huh. Do you know if he’s single?”
No, I had no idea, but I did know we needed to avoid interruptions tonight. “He’s dating a trainee surgeon from St. Leonard’s.”
“Aw, bummer.”
“I know, right? Thanks for keeping Beans safe.”
“Good luck with finding his owner.”
Heath looped a length of thin rope through Beans’s collar, and I bribed him into the back seat of the car with a Mini Cheddar. The dog, not Heath, although I did offer the packet around once we were all in the car.
Heath shook his head. “Just ate dinner.”
Lucky him. Not only had I skipped dessert, but my date also thought it was perfectly acceptable to lean over help himself to half my ravioli. In the end, I’d been so grossed out that I sat back and let him finish it. Oh, and he’d chewed with his mouth open. I gave Beans another Cheddar and ate two myself as we glided through the dusky streets. Then I tried Geoff’s phone again. Nothing.
But my phone buzzed with a message.
Dex: Did Alana send help?
Me: You got three people out of bed and two people out of work.
Dex: Good. You shouldn’t be walking around out there alone.
Mick tucked the SUV in a residents’ parking bay near the church and shrugged. “Might get a ticket, but the traffic wardens don’t like this weather.”
“Can’t blame them for that,” Heath said far too cheerfully as he hopped out to open my door. Mick found a spare Blackwood jacket that swamped me, but at least it was waterproof because now sleet was falling and turning to slush underfoot.
“Sure picked a good night for this, Geoff,” I muttered, more to myself than anyone else. “Now what do we do?”
“Try giving the dog a bit of line,” Heath suggested. “Enough that he can choose his direction, but not so much that he can run into the road.”
I did as instructed, and after Beans peed on the fence and sniffed a bit, he began pulling towards the park, just as the lady who’d found him had described. Did he simply want a walk, or something else? The two men had powerful flashlights, and they shone the beams into bushes and alleys as we passed.
“This isn’t the way to Geoff’s house. What if we waste our time?”
“Let’s rule it out before we try anything else.”
On match days at the local stadium, football fans used Highbury Fields as a shortcut, but tonight it was quiet, almost eerie. The leisure centre had closed an hour ago. The tennis courts lay empty. Beans trotted forward, pulling slightly on the rope, determined to get wherever he was going with little consideration as to whether I managed to stay upright. At one point, I slipped on a patch of ice, but Heath caught me. Hmm, was he single?
We were heading for the trees around the leisure centre, and I heard something rustle. Beans’s ears pricked up, his head went down, and his tail started wagging. If this was a freaking squirrel… Heath held up a hand and moved in front of me.
“Wait, isn’t he the new guy?” I whispered to Mick. “Should he be—”
Heath began jogging, and Beans would have pulled me over if Mick hadn’t leapt forward to catch me with an arm around my waist. The rope slipped out of my hand.
“Beans!”
Then I saw what Heath had seen.
The boot sticking out of a clump of bushes.
I ran too.
Geoff was lying on the ground, still and pale, his lips blue, and Heath fell to his knees beside him, checking for a pulse.
“Is he…? Is he…?”
“He’s alive. Just. Get the trauma pack while I call it in?”
Mick nodded and hurried off. Beans began licking Geoff’s face, and I took hold of the rope again, even though he wasn’t going anywhere. Such a good dog. He’d left to find help for his owner, and it wasn’t his fault a well-meaning lady didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her.
“This is Heath Carlisle,” Heath said, and I realised he was wearing an earpiece. “We have a man with a head wound down next to the leisure centre in Highbury Fields. Need an ambulance, over.”
A head wound? The blood trickling down Geoff’s temple registered, and I choked out a sob. Oh hell!
“Looks like hypothermia too, probably a couple of hours. We’ll be needing the police, over.” Heath glanced up at Mick as he arrived back with a hefty green bag. “Watch my back, yeah?”
Watch his back? The implication of his words hit, and I sagged against a tree trunk with Beans at my side. The location of the body, the head injury… This wasn’t an accident. Geoff had been mugged?
Heath tucked heat pads under Geoff’s armpits, added more by his neck and his groin, then covered him with a silver space blanket and a thicker fleece one. The two men debated whether to move him off the wet ground, but ultimately decided against it until the paramedics arrived. A tiny portable monitor beeped in time with his pulse.
“Do you want to wait in the car, love?” Mick asked.
By myself? With a psycho on the loose? “No way.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, and my shiver had little to do with the cold. Beans panted beside me, his breath steaming the air, and I crouched to pet him.
“What happened?” I asked, I whispered, not getting an answer or even expecting one.
Heath glanced across at me. “Probably should’ve asked earlier, but this is Geoff, right?”
I nodded miserably. “Yes.”
“He doesn’t have any ID on him. No phone, no wallet. Does he make a habit of leaving them at home?”
“Not his phone. I don’t know about his wallet. Is he going to make it? I mean, is he going to be okay?”
“I’m not a doctor, but as long as he’s breathing, he has a chance.”
“I should’ve run. I should’ve got here faster. If I—”
“If you’d got here faster, maybe we’d have two people lying here instead of one.”
Oh hell. I gripped the rope until my knuckles turned white, desperately trying to hold on to my emotions at the same time.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“You did exactly the right thing. Asked your boyfriend to call Zander and then came out to meet us.”
“Oh, Dex isn’t my boyfriend. He’s just a friend who’s staying with me for a bit.”
Heath glanced at Mick, and what was that look supposed to mean?
“It’s true.”
“I’d better go and direct the police,” Mick said. “Don’t go running off, okay?”
“I won’t.”
My legs would barely hold me up; I couldn’t be walk anywhere, let alone run. Mick disappeared towards the glimmer of blue lights, leaving me alone with Heath, Beans, and a motionless Geoff. Honestly, I’d thought Beans had just tugged the leash out of Geoff’s hand and run off—not for a minute did I think my boss was lying in the undergrowth mortally wounded.
“Do you know his next of kin?” Heath asked.
“I-I know he’s not married. He mentioned a daughter a couple of times, but I think she lives overseas. Someone at work might know.”
People were hurrying towards us with a stretcher now, Mick and two medics, plus a couple more men who looked like Blackwood backup.
Dex: Any news?
My eyes prickled. If Dex hadn’t overstepped and messaged Alana, I’d have been scared out of my mind, trying to deal with this on my own.
Me: Okay, fine, you were right. I shouldn’t have come out alone.
Dex: Did you find him?
Me: In the park. The ambulance just arrived.
Dex: Ambulance? What the fuck happened?
Me: Looks like Geoff was mugged. Blackwood’s here, four guys, and they’re helping.
More than helping. They’d taken over, thank goodness. I could do nothing but watch as the six men worked to load Geoff onto the stretcher, then carried him across the slippery ground to the waiting ambulance. He hanging on in there, thank goodness, although I could tell from the urgent whispers that they were worried. The police showed up too and began asking questions we couldn’t answer. Who had done this? What had we seen? Heath and Mick stayed with me as I explained my nightmare of an evening from beginning to end, starting with the world’s third worst date and finishing with our grim discovery in the park. After giving our contact details, we were finally allowed to leave. Crime scene techs would be arriving soon, they promised, and I knew what that meant—Geoff’s injuries were a big deal. Phones got stolen a hundred times a day in London, but the police rarely ran forensics.
“We’ll drop you home,” Heath offered. “What’s happening with the dog?”
A good question.
“Uh, I guess I could take him with me.” Technically, I wasn’t allowed to keep a pet, but surely my landlady would make an exception for a night or two? And nobody would mind if I took him to the office tomorrow. “Could we stop somewhere to buy him kibble?”
“No problem.”
Beans jumped into the back seat again, quite happy with the idea of another car ride. If only he could talk. He was perhaps the only witness to the attack on Geoff, and the investigative reporter in me had a hundred questions as well as an idea for a new story. What were the street-crime statistics for each of the London boroughs? How many cases got solved each year, and how many didn’t? I’d always felt safe in Highbury, but now I knew I’d be looking behind me every time I left the flat. Thank goodness Dex was staying in the spare room—the idea of being on my own made me break out in a cold sweat.
I wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight, that was for sure.